An Aural Journey through Kabini: Pre-Dawn Critters and Jitters

THE COCK HAVING CROWED, the morning is underway. The sun hasn’t yet begun beaming the kind of light that casts shadows, so for now you’re free as a soaring kite to let the pre-sunrise coolness wafting on the wind caress your cheeks.

But you only really awaken fully when a series of short and sharp shrieks pierces your very skullbone. You realise you didn’t know there was so much silence in the jungle until it’s persistently shattered by this frenetic broadcast ostensibly of pure panic.

A herd of chital or spotted deer are intently eyeing a nearby bush almost in unison, their white tails up like those of a pack of pomeranians, and are calling out in alarm, possibly having spotted a predator.

But they don’t disperse forthwith. Instead, every few seconds they stomp their feet, strain their necks forward and go “Aouww!” The sound is thin, high-pitched, and loud. There is a certain unimpeachable fragility to their voice, a nervousness almost heartrending, and a sense of vulnerability that is almost too heavy for the delicate baritone to carry. A glass might shatter if kept in earshot of the call; if not from the frequency, certainly from the nervous energy it seems to be suffused with. So much so that your heartbeat seems to rise in direct proportion to the regularity of its occurrence, until anticipation hits a peak. You strain every optic nerve to peer in the same direction, aching to sight a form, to discern a shape, to impart to your desire the wings of reality. But nothing manifests just yet. “Chital are known to call for all sorts of things,” your naturalist informs. “Sometimes they call after a predator’s scent left behind at a spot, for snakes and jackals, and sometimes even upon seeing humans and safari vehicles.”

As you resume your peregrination, these revelations occupy your mind until your advance is once again halted, this time by a high-pitched whinny travelling by the aerial route, and coming to a halt on a tree. “Kee ki ki ki ki ki ki ki ki krrrrrrrrrr,” it declares, sounding like the recording of the crank of a petrol engine starter motor played back at thrice the speed. A male lesser (or black-rumped) flameback woodpecker – for the crest is red – has landed on a tree trunk, looking for grub – a pursuit to which he presses himself now in a most audible way. Using his zygodactyl feet and tail to secure a firm footing, he hammers away at the bark with his beak as many as 20 times a second, to get to the arthropods that lie underneath, and scoop them up with his long, wiry tongue. Having provided the vocals prior to his alighting, this is now the percussion segment of his morning raaga, as his drumming away on the trunk, if you weren’t looking, would strike you as the handiwork of a machine, or of a super-fast camera equipped with a wooden shutter in the middle of a burst.